Share WiFi to Wired Connection with Ubuntu

So I bought my second Raspberry Pi and it was delivered last week.  I have barely been able to contain myself waiting to set it up.  However work is crazy right now and I worked till Midnight (started at 7 AM) two nights last week and it was son’s 4th birthday and my wife and I are trying to get our home in order to list for sale.  So yeah, things are BUSY!  Anyway, back to the story…

I had to travel to Oklahoma City for work this week and I brought my new rPi with me and an SD Card.  I’m in the hotel after work and decide it’s time to get to work on the new project, but I didn’t have any peripherals.  I made a quick run to Wal-Mart, grabbed a $10 keyboard and a $5 HDMI cable and I was in business…sort of.

I wrote Rasbian to the SD card and connected the rPi to the hotel TV via the HDMI cable, used an Android charger for power, my wireless mouse and my new keyboard.  I booted up the rPi and installed Rasbian.  So far so good, but I really didn’t want to quit there.  I knew there had to be a way to get internet to my new rPi.  I called the front desk and they told me it was 2013 and there are no wired connections in hotels anymore (my how times have changed.)

I started looking around the Ubuntu forums and came across a link that I thought had a good shot at giving me data, figured I had nothing to lose and gave it a shot.

It turned out to be a piece of cake!  So I had wireless on my laptop, connected to the hotel WiFi.  I had to go the Network > Edit Connections > Wired > Wired Connection1 – Edit > IPv4 Settings – change Method to: Shared to other computers.  Save.  Reboot the laptop….and BOOM!  Data for the rPi!

I’m planning on using this rPi as a server for my family’s pictures and videos and also will be using it as a VPN server for secure browsing when I’m traveling.

I’ll write another post on the final setup.  Till then, if you’re stuck in a hotel with your rPi and need data, it’s easy to get!